Author and host of the hit OUTDOOR CHANNEL show SHOOTING GALLERY spouts off...

Sunday, October 02, 2011

Lazy Sunday...

Hubba-hubba!

...watching "River of No Return," perhaps not Robert Mitchum's greatest role. That's what lazy Sundays are for, though. Managed to eek out a top ten finish in Cheyenne yesterday, largely because of a pretty consistent rifle and finally coming to grips with the Browning BSS double. Makes me feel a little better about my less than stellar performance in the IDPA Worlds. I'm trying to figure out a way to work a little defensive pistol competition into my now-brutal schedule. Not sure whether it's possible or not, but am going to give it a try. I think I talked about it on the podcast, but it's hard (at least for me) to do a couple of shooting sports at the same time.

At this stage in my career...I was tempted to say "late" stage in my career...LOL!...cowboy is my absolute favorite. I love the transition between guns (and can certainly see the huge appeal of 3-Gun). If 3-Gun hadhats...

I did drop a note to Wayne Novak abut changing out the sights on the SR9s, the gun I would like to stick with.

Autumnal AR

We did a day of filming for a new opening of SHOOTING GALLERY...it was a lot of riding up and down about 1000 yards of road on a borrowed Beemer, as my Honda Magna was having a bad day. I had my old SG-yellow AR strapped to my back. At one point a sheriff's car drove past. He saw the AR, stopped dead in the middle of the road and apparently called it in (I could see him on the mic). After a couple of minutes, he drove away, because Colorado is an open carry state.

Actually, that particular AR has been a crash test dummy over the last few years. It's a plain vanilla M4-styled carbine from J&T Distributing we built on Season 1 of SG back in the Clinton Ban days when no other show would even touch a nasty black rifle. The old Cav Arms provided the SG-yellow furniture (including a non-collapsable stock to meet the looney requirements of the AWB). Eventually we disabled the trigger to use the gun as a drone to demo with. I always liked the little gun because it's light and fast...I've got a new bolt with one of the miracle coatings waiting for a gun, and I think there's a Timney trigger around here somewhere, so I thought I'd put the gun back in service later this fall (in my "spare" time, LOL!).

Lot of interesting rumors flying around the Internet about the entire BATFE being thrown under the bus to save B-HOs political appointees as "Fast & Furious" burns hotter, brighter and closer to the White House:

Multiple sources, including sources from ATF, DOJ and Congressional offices have said there is a white paper circulating within the Department of Justice, outlining the essential elimination of ATF. According to sources, the paper outlines the firing of at least 450 ATF agents in an effort to conduct damage control as Operation Fast and Furious gets uglier and as election day 2012 gets closer.

Make no mistake about it...AFT needs to get thrown under a bus. It has aways been an agency in search of a mission ever since "revenuers" stopped busting up whisky kegs and started carrying tape measures to see if gun barrels were of legal length...certainly the agency should have been dissolved after the Waco disaster. However, the higher-ups involved in "Fast & Furious," which has claimed hundreds of lives in Mexico and the deaths of 2 American agents while committing an act of war against a friendly power, need to pay. And pay big.

6 comments:

nj_larry
said...

The first rule of bureaucracies is that no one ever pays. Like in Las Vegas, the house ALWAYS wins. The scuttlebutt is that the FBI would take over the functions of ATF. Really? You think that you could count on that? That BHO would actually pull a Ron Reagan and FIRE 450 agents and thousands of support personnel? Putting them on the street. Nope. It ain't happening. No way, no how. Plus how would you like the TSA getting the ATF role? Just change the name of everyone's reporting department. Don't put it out of the question. Be VERY careful of what you wish for.

I have given some cops a double take or two myself. While wearing a .357 in Huntington West Virginia, I was stopped by a city cop. He took possession my gun, called it in, and then brought it right back to me.

His look of incredulity was priceless, but he followed the directions given to him over the radio. I like that about WV and other open carry states.

The M4 style carbine is a gem of a design. I had the joy of firing a Colt M4 in the National Guard and I never had it jam. It was the best performing and handling gun that I have ever used.

Maybe the FBI will take over part of the ATF's functions - the "nice" ones, the ones dealing with moonshiners and explosives, things people will "see" as really really bad; or the paper shuffling handling the FFLs.

The rest of the ATF's functions - the adubes-the-gun-owners ones - will disappear into the DHS into some nameless faceless corner of the bureaucracy to arise on an as-needed basis. It will make things even more difficult, more unaccountable, answerable to no one, other than Janet from another planet.

This is not good if even remotely true. It just drives things deeper into the cloud.